Manoj Kumar - India and Middle East Air Quality Monitoring

What considerations are important when designing air monitoring stations for use in the Middle East and India?

The climate in the Middle East and sub-continent is generally hotter and more humid. Instrument performance is affected by changes in temperature and humidity, especially carbon monoxide and ammonia analysers. Therefore, instruments working in this climate need to be installed in well designed and properly insulated shelters, with air conditioning customised to that particular location’s climatic conditions.

Middle East
In the Middle East dust and sandstorms are a common disruption to air quality monitoring. Ecotech has had many similar experiences with its shelters throughout Australia’s central and desert regions developing power efficient, highly insulated, storm proof air quality stations.

Indian Sub-continent
Within the Indian sub-continent the humidity during summer, especially in southern India, can affect instrument measurement, similar to tropical northern Australia. Ecotech’s stations use many different techniques to eliminate the errors humidity can bring. These include: a vertical heated sample manifold, insulated sample lines and a sufficiently high flow rate to avoid condensation forming. Humidity can also have a significant impact on particulate monitors with some working better than others in this environment, for instance a particulate monitor that collects particulates onto its filter for 24 hours or more will see its mass change based purely on ambient humidity, a monitor which changes its filter on a hourly basis will be less influenced by humidity influences.